Replacement of Hattie McDaniel’s missing Oscar to be gifted to Howard University

The first Oscar to be awarded to a Black performer will be restored as a gift to the first Black college in America.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced Tuesday that Hattie McDaniel’s dying wish to have her historic honor in the halls of Howard University will be fulfilled – once again.

McDaniel, who won the best supporting actress Academy Award for 1939’s “Gone With the Wind,” bequeathed her award to the school after her 1952 death. But after being displayed in the university’s drama department until the late 1960s, it went missing.

A “replacement” Oscar will be given to the Howard University Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts during a ceremony titled “Hattie’s Come Home” on Sunday. The ceremony will include remarks by Phylicia Rashad, outgoing dean of the program, who knows a thing or two about making awards show history.

In 2004, the former “Cosby Show” star was the first Black woman to win the Tony Award for best actress in a play for Kenny Leon’s revival of Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun.”

“When I was a student in the College of Fine Arts at Howard University, in what was then called the Department of Drama, I would often sit and gaze in wonder at the Academy Award that had been presented to Ms. Hattie McDaniel,” Rashad said in a statement. “I am overjoyed that this Academy Award is returning to what is now the Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts at Howard University. This immense piece of history will be back in the College of Fine Arts for our students to draw inspiration from. Ms. Hattie is coming home!””

McDaniel portrayed the role of Mammy in the Victor Fleming-helmed epic, which depicted Southern living during the Civil War and Reconstruction periods. Due to continued racial segregation and white supremacy practices in Hollywood during that era, McDaniel was seated separately from the film’s other nominees at the 12th Academy Awards ceremony in 1940. Her Academy Award was a plaque as opposed to a statuette – which was customary for supporting actor awards given between 1936 and 1942.

In her acceptance speech at the time, McDaniel said her win “has made me feel very, very humble and I shall always hold it as a beacon for anything I may be able to do in the future. I sincerely hope I shall always be a credit to my race and to the motion picture industry.”

It would be another 51 years before another Black woman would win an acting Oscar, when Whoopi Goldberg took home the same supporting actress prize in 1991 for “Ghost.”